Nobrainer’s Think Tank

The new full version of Thunderbird is a nice upgrade. That much is true. However, it’s sad that after such a long time between major revisions, it still feels like it’s much less than it can and should be.

My first gripe is that upon installation, the new version of Thunderbird took it upon itself to completely re-download all of my IMAP email. We’re talking about many gigs of information here. Fortunately I installed the new version when I was enjoying a wired connection at my office, otherwise the performance-robbing exercise may have taken a nearly an entire day.

My 2nd gripe is that the new Thunderbird seems to often download a couple of new messages and then spend minutes “indexing message 1 of 2″.

My 3rd gripe, is that the “reply” options frequently suck. Many times I receive an email from someone. I reply to it. Then I want to reply to my reply. In the old version of Thunderbird, I could “reply all” and reply to myself and the original sender. Not so in the new Thunderbird.

My 4th gripe has to do with search. Frankly, I think the search in version 3 is better than in 2. However, I had installed some extension (now I can’t even tell which one, maybe Expression Search, that let you easily search email by quickly specifying the “from:” the “to:” the “subject:” and/or the “body:”. The new search only provides a few options. So if you want to search for something in the body from a particularly sender, then you’re shit outta luck because that ain’t a predefined option so fuck you you needy thunderbird shithead asshole freeloader. And on top of all that, the search can be ridiculously slow. If users are going to have a ton of data, it’s crucial to have fast and accurate search functions.

On the upside for the new Thunderbird, it’s nice to be able to have messages opened in tabs rather than Windows. Plus I like that it asks if I intend to attach a file when I use the word “attachment” in a message.

Bottom line, though, is that Thunderbird still has a lot of growing up to do.